Pay no attention to the people behind the curtain

Thursday, September 24, 2009

I've been working on a post--in my head, mostly, but I've been working on it--which is sort of a "what would it take for me to support Mayor Tom Barrett's plan to take over the Milwaukee Public Schools?" post. I figured, you know, I oppose the idea, and see nothing but bad things ahead if it goes through, but I'm a reasonable man and I am seldom completely unpersuadable. So I have started imagining what else the Mayor could say or do or offer to make a takeover palatable.

At the top of the list, literally, number one on my list, is "Don't run for governor." If you're going to do this, I was planning to write, make a real, full, and absolute commitment to the voters of this city that you will see this transition through.

And yet with news today that US Rep Ron Kind is not running for governor, it seems much more likely that Tom Barrett is. In the first days after Jim Doyle announced he was not running, the word was that Kind and Barrett, former colleagues in the House, would not run against each other. Kinds non-entrance makes Barrett's entrance that much more certain.

And, as we all know, you can't get elected Governor of Wisconsin if you're from Milwaukee. However, much like last year's presidential election bucked the "you can't get elected while a sitting senator" rule by pitting two sitting senators against each other, the 2010 governor's race may well pit two Milwaukeeans against each other. And both--Barrett and Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker--are hard at work on building their anti-Milwaukee cred, Barrett through this takeover nonsense and Walker through, well, beingWalker.

This makes me much less likely to get around to finishing that "what would it take" post. The takeover talk suddenly seems a lot more like Barrett and Doyle (who us no great fan of Lt. Gov. Barb Lawton, the only announced Democrat so far) setting the stage for a state-wide campaign.